The automotive industry is subject to frequent product recalls, as manufacturers correct defects in their vehicles that reveal themselves only after some use. While such events may be embarrassing for a marque, it’s not necessarily a bad thing — after all, we would rather put our trust in a carmaker prepared to own up and fix things rather than sweep their woes under the carpet.
There’s one recall that’s been going on for years which isn’t the vehicle manufacturer’s fault though, and now it seems Toyota are the latest to be hit, with some vehicles as old as two decades being part of it. Long time Hackaday readers will probably recognize where this is going as we’ve covered it before; at its centre are faulty airbag charges from Takata, and the result has been one of the largest safety related recalls in automotive history.
An automotive airbag is a fabric structure inflated at high speed by a small explosive charge when triggered by the sharp deceleration of an incident. It is intended to cushion any impact the occupant might make upon the car’s interior. The problem with the faulty Takata units is that moisture ingress could alter the properties of the charge, and this along with corrosion could increase its power and produce a hail of metal fragments on detonation.
Our colleague [Lewin Day] has penned a series of informative and insightful investigations of the technology behind the Takata scandal, going back quite a few years. With such relatively ancient vehicles now being recalled we can’t help wondering whether it would be easier for Toyota to run a buyback scheme and take the cars off the road rather than fix them in this case, but we’re curious as non automotive safety engineers why the automotive airbag has evolved in this manner. Why is one of very few consumer explosive devices not better regulated, why is it sold with an unlimited lifetime, and why are they not standardized for routine replacement on a regular schedule just like any other vehicle consumable?
2003-2004 Toyota Corolla: IFCAR, Public domain.
I’d imagine half the reason there’s no overt regulation on them is because it helps people not to freak out about the bomb in front of their faces.
Not saying they’re a bad idea – they’re brilliant and save lives! – but the general public doesn’t want to think of it as an explosive (“airbag” has a nice soft feel… “explosive steering wheel safety device” might freak people!). We don’t want people attempting to remove them, and we certainly don’t dont want people attempting to repurpose them.
On the other hand, if people understood that it was an explosive, maybe they would stop adding sequins to their steering wheels and creating collision-activated glam claymores.
Is it an explosive though, or more like gunpowder? What’s the chemical reaction?
Explosives imply shock waves and nitrogen bonds breaking.
Ammonium nitrate decomposition. The entire problem is that the seals prevent moisture ingress, so eventually… boom. When the first Takata recall came out, they prioritized it by how humid the areas were. (Like, “if you live in Florida, uh… maybe tow it to the repair shop, ‘kay?”)
So… yes.
“it would be easier for Toyota to run a buyback scheme and take the cars off the road rather than fix them in this case”…
errrrr, no, thanks. that would be a very bad idea from the consumers’ point of view.
I’d rather have a functioning car and not being forced to buy a new one paying 90% out of my pockets.
There are probably some people who would go for such an option. Having options isn’t a bad thing. If it were the only option it would be bad, probably illegal too, I imagine. It wouldn’t fit the definition of making right the error.
The buyback price of a 20 year old car is “here’s a popsicle for you, now run along.”.
Agreed. I’m from a very poor part of the US where many people simply cannot afford to replace an old vehicle that is otherwise fully functional – some token cash would not really help, and I imagine many in those circumstances would opt to keep driving an unsafe vehicle rather than taking it in and being forced to get rid of it
Can’t you just remove the airbag and not tell anyone?
Also some people stick to their cars because maintenance is easy, repairs are cheap and you have no touch panel – just buttons and pots. Modern cars are more and more “vehicle as a service” – you buy an expensive car but they really make money on services which they enforce. So even if you get 90% discount on the same model but latest release decision could be tough.
As far as I can tell, this is not the original recall to change the airbags. That was several years ago.
The FAQs for “Front Passenger Airbag Recalls” at https://www.toyota.com/recall/takata are from March 2016 (or earlier).
The “SAFETY RECALL E04” has been upgraded 25 Jan 2024 to a “Do Not Drive advisory”.
And from the FAQs it looks like Toyota has sent several letters to the owners (if they can find their addresses) urging them to get the airbags changed free of charge.
Until recently the airbags were dangerous only when deployed, but now they have become unstable and can explode without being deployed due to degradation of the propellant caused by humidity and high temperature.
thanks for clarification. Previously they were dangerous if deployed, now they’re dangerous always.
I was wondering, what’s the shelf-life of an airbag anyways? Don’t they all become dangerous at some point?
Why not replace them in routine maintenance? People don’t replace oil in routine maintenance because it costs a bit, the cost of airbag replacement processes (even if modified to be easier in future) would write off the value of a car after about 7 years.
Buyback? No ta, I’m happy with my older car – I don’t want to be forced to buy a new car where I shoulder the burden of most of the cost and then have other faults and potentially more depreciation.
I think this process is working perfectly well, they’ll replace them if you want, for free, and they do their best to find you.
This must be a new batch. My ’04 Corolla already had the airbags swapped in the last Takata recall.
My 2004 Honda has had its airbags recalled – twice!
I recall debating airbag mandates; no one (but me) thought that “allow airbags to be removed by consumers” was a good idea. They had to kill some kids with them before they decided that the “passenger safety” off switch for that side of the car was OK.
“Safety mandates” are a way to spread the cost of individual stupidity across a greater portion of society; enabling the stupid individuals to continue incurring those costs without ever noticing the expenses themselves.
Accidents happen, not out of stupidity. Airbags aren’t designed to be idiot cushions.
Statistically speaking, it’s stupidity though.
If you go by collision types, head-on front impacts are pretty much 50/50 with sides and rear impacts in the NHTSA statistics.
Which makes sense, since car crashes usually involve two cars. One hits the other, but it counts as two impacts in the statistics – one for each car. That also suggests that roughly half of the cars involved in impacts are due to no fault of their driver – and if accidents play any role in the behavior of the _other_ driver, then it must be that accidents and not incompetence play a greater part in the cause of collisions and why people need airbags.
Then there’s animal impacts when a deer or some other animal jumps in front of you out of the bushes. That also tips the scales.
It’s worth noting that automotive airbag inflators are not, by design, “explosive”. More specifically, they are not a detonating charge (blows things apart at high local velocities) but a deflagrating charge (generates a pressure wave of, e.g., rapidly expanding gas). The difference is important in the life-or-death sense.
The automotive airbag problem is that incorrectly constructed inflator charges can become contaminated, as with moisture, or become heat-damaged over time. These events harden the combustible inflator charge material, changing its performance very much for the worse – in the “deadly” sense. Contaminated charges burn “slow, then very fast”, transitioning the subsonic gas-generating process from deflagrating (burning, outgassing, and quickly filling the airbag) to detonating (suddenly burning the entire charge at once and exploding at supersonic velocities). The detonation forces instantly tear the strong metal inflator casing into many supersonic pieces aimed directly at the people seated in the car. In effect, the inflation charge intended to protect the occupants becomes a shrapnel grenade.
My understanding of the root cause is, in essence, race-to-the-bottom capitalism. Several manufacturers developed airbag inflators and/or systems. The return on investment was poor and the product was inherently dangerous – and thus expensive and risky to manufacturer. As happens in commodity manufacturing, the lowest bidder wins the market, and a company called Takata that designed and sold safety products (including static-lines for parachute deployments), pitched low, low prices, won much business, displaced or bought out higher-quality competitors, and eventually owned the market for airbag inflators.
Unfortunately, the low, low prices also drove poor quality manufacturing, poor (but less expensive) inflator chemistries, worse product quality oversight, and, ultimately, huge volumes of product that were dangerously unfit for purpose. But leadership and shareholders saw very good returns on their investments.
And then inflator age and quality-related failures started killing and maiming the customers of Takata’s customers.
Per Wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takata_Corporation), Takata went bankrupt in 2017 after the U.S. charged three members of the corporation’s leadership and fined the company one billion dollars. Takata was bought by China’s Key Safety Systems in 2018. Key Safety Systems changed its name to Joyson Safety Systems and continues to operate, including in the United States. Joyson Safety Systems reported in 2021 that they discovered over a thousand cases where Takata had falsified seat belt safety test data.
Separately:
It’s worth noting that prior to the airbag fiasco, Takata designed and sold improperly manufactured seatbelts to primarily Japanese manufacturers. Ensuing seat belt failures triggered in 1995 the second largest automotive recall in the history of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Personally:
My Honda has been recalled and repaired at least three times for airbag inflator issues. I have no confidence that the current versions are survivable.
This is a case where “caveat emptor” should apply. You don’t buy safety critical equipment from the lowest bidder, or at least you run them through independent testing and monitor the quality continuously.
“Capitalism” isn’t to blame here, because everyone knows that competition at the profitability limit happens by compromising quality.